


Foreigner

by Strange_Archivist



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2018-09-26 00:02:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9852857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strange_Archivist/pseuds/Strange_Archivist
Summary: All of the Stranger Things oneshot/drabble ideas that come to me in one place. Fluff, angst, future season theories, the gang's all here. Will likely be heavily Mileven, with perhaps a few other background ships thrown in there. Just gonna start fully embracing the fact that this show has me obsessed.





	1. Waiting for a girl like you

**Author's Note:**

> This is where I work out my inability to wait for future seasons. I blame the Duffer Brothers. Will be a series of one shots, some maybe AU, mostly fluffy/angsty Mileven stuff. Was started before season 2, so much of the first few chapters is now AU

After everything else that's happened, the thesslehydra, the Upside Down leaking more into Hawkins, Max’s damn sociopath of a brother torturing them, he can't take this on top of everything else. Too many unbelievable things have happened, his brain is basically on disbelief overload. It’s too much for him to comprehend the resurrected telekinetic girl standing in front of him.

She's dead. She died. He'd repeated those words to himself for almost a year, convinced they were accurate, convinced he had to, as his parents phrased, “accept the reality of the situation and move on”.

But this is a new reality, one in which she's alive, with slightly longer hair, looking a bit older, wearing a strange mish-mosh of clothes, standing in the basement of the cabin Chief Hopper had lead them to, and looking at Mike with those eyes he'll never be able to forget in a thousand years.

He's reminded of their first meeting her in the woods last year, the way he and the guys had just stared at her and she at them, none of them really knowing what to do.  
She hadn't said anything that fateful night in the woods, not even when they'd peppered her with questions before Mike decided that no matter what, no kid deserved to spend that freezing cold night out in the rain and took her back to his house.

Then, like now, he sensed the guys waiting for him to say something, do something. But Mike’s brain feels jammed.

Fortunately it's Eleven who breaks the silence this time. “Hi, Mike,” she says tentatively.

That at least temporarily unsticks his brain, though it unfortunately doesn't help his twisted up tongue, “Wha- El!” he splutters. “But. How? You - you're, I mean, you're alive?”

In her typical, maddening fashion, she offers him a one word answer that at once erases any doubt he has over whether she's the real El but does nothing to illuminate the mystery surrounding where she's been or what happened to her.

“Yes.”


	2. True Faith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucas centered drabble in which I find out that my style of writing is better for writing Mike's point of view than Lucas's but I'm posting it anyway because Lucas deserves some love.

It’s not like he expected the wrist rocket to save them all. Not really. But when they’re huddled together in Mr. Clarke’s room with basically nothing else, he can’t help but hope.

So when the demogorgon crashes into the room, oozing and screeching like some demon monster of old, and Dustin and Mike shout for the wrist rocket, he’s terrified, but resolved and hopeful.

He loads the first rock into the slingshot, unable to help feeling a little thrilled at being able to really use his weapon for the first time. Before, the only thing he’d really been able to aim the wrist rocket at had been trees around the neighborhood.

“At least the tree target practice helped,” he thinks as the first rock finds its mark. For a brief moment he and the guys are hoping the monster will be detered, but it seems only annoyed.

Lucas loads his slingshot again, aims, and releases. SMACK. The rock finds it’s mark again. But the demogorgon howls and continues advancing.

For first time, Lucas is struck by the irony of the fact that he very likely will be killed by a monster he used to think didn’t even exist. He loads the wrist rocket again, remembering learning about David and Goliath in Sunday school and thinking he feels a lot like how David must have. Desperate. Scared, but unable to give up.

He takes aim, this time hoping to channel all the strength of biblical heroes long since dead, and hoping that if there is a God, he spares them. The rock hits the demogorgon again, and this time, the beast is flung back against the chalkboard with an unbelievable force.

“Uh, thanks?” Lucas thinks momentarily to a God he’s still not sure exists, until he and the other guys see Eleven standing up again, and advancing on the beast.

Of course it’s her, and not some divine act. But he can’t figure how she’s going to make it out of this alive. She was drained almost beyond consciousness before, how is she going to disable this creature that can’t be swayed by guns and can move through dimensions? How is she going to do it without destroying herself?

It’s only when she’s gone that Lucas realizes she never intended to make it out alive. And it’s that thought that makes him hug Mike and pat him awkwardly on the back when his friend stops calling her and devolves into sobs. Most days, Lucas doesn’t do touchy feely. But this definitely hasn’t been like most days and even though he still thinks Mike’s having gotten googly eyed for her was dumb, he can’t deny that El was a good friend to all of them, and can’t help but feel sympathy for his obviously heartbroken best friend.

Before he drifts off to sleep in the ER waiting room, Lucas thinks maybe El was sort of a divine intervention. Or maybe not. The past week has turned so much upside down and left him seriously questioning all his Sunday school teachings. He’s glad when his exhaustion overcomes him and he can fall asleep on Dustin’s shoulder. And even gladder to be woken up by Mike yelling, “he’s up, Will’s up!”

He feels awful for being so suspicious of a girl he now realizes must’ve suffered terrible abuse, a girl who saved him and all his friends, including Will, in a way. But seeing Will whole, alive, and awake, for a moment, pushes out all other thoughts. For a moment, they’re four 12 year old friends again. And for that moment, the world sort of makes sense again for Lucas Sinclair.


	3. Boys of Summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My take on what "Mad" Max might be like also, a glimpse into what I imagine Dustin’s home life is like.

It’s not like she wanted to uphold the stereotype of feisty, red-haired girls. It’s just, she doesn’t want to be like other girls. No, that’s not really it. She can’t be like other girls. Other girls are breakable. Delicate. Other girls would’ve crumbled under the weight of her secret. Under the pain of it.

She can’t break. Breaking doesn’t get you anywhere. So she molds on layer after layer of armor, both in her baggy clothes and boyish attitude, and reads story after story about all sorts of heroes with all sorts of armor, to remind her to be strong. To remind her that her situation won’t last forever. Maybe she’ll develop powers one day and run off to find Professor X’s school. Or something. However she gets away, she’ll have to do it by being tough. Strong. Unbreakable.

That’s why instead of giggling an “oh, sorry!” or whatever it is normal girls do when they run boys over on their skateboards, she shouts, “watch where you’re going!” To be fair, she thinks, most girls probably don’t have skateboards to run boys over on in the first place. Also, to be more fair, they really mostly ran each other over, since he was on a bike and it’s not like she didn’t hit the pavement either.

“Me?!” the boy shouts indignantly. “Are you kidding me? You ran right over me!”

“Seriously? You practically killed me!”

“Lucas! You okay man?” another boy shouts at the first, joining them on his bike, panting like he’s been peddling hard.  
“Do I look okay?” the first boy says. “She came out of nowhere!”

She doesn’t want to be like other girls, but seriously, it’s so annoying when boys can’t just admit something was their fault and say sorry. Not that she’s about to do that either, but still. “Did not! If you’d been watching where you were going-”

“I was!”

“Lucas shut, up,” the second boy says. He hops off his bike and bends his curly-haired head down towards Lucas.

“Don’t tell me to shut up, I-”

“No, seriously man, you’re bleeding. Every time you talk, you bleed more.”

That stops all three of them from arguing for a moment.

Max doesn’t realize how she missed it, his chin is wicked scraped up.

“Does it hurt?” the curly-haired boy asks, tentatively touching it.

“Of course it hurts!” Lucas snaps. Then looks back up to Max to glare for a moment, before his expression changes to one of what she thinks might actually be concern.

“Whoa,” he says pointing to her arm. “You’re bleeding too.”

She looks down and nearly faints. Then hates herself for such a girly reaction to blood. “It’s nothing,” she says, trying to sound tough.

“You’re both idiots,” curly says to them. “Come on, my house is closest.”

Max and Lucas spare one last glare for each other and follow curly.

The ranch he leads them to is bright inside, but messy. It’s not the sort of mess Max is used to, instead of a mess of beer bottles and half smoked cigarettes, it's a mess of well, everything. All kinds of springs and sprockets, paintbrushes and tools are clustered on almost every table like little work stations. Some appear to be held together to form strange inventions.

Neither Lucas nor curly seem to find any of this strange though.

“Dustin, is that you?” a woman’s voice calls from another room. Hers is a strange accent. British, Max thinks.

“Yeah, mom!” curly shouts back. 

“Is everything alright?” the woman asks, walking into the room. Right away, Max thinks the room is explained. The woman has a round face and soft curls like her son, curls barely tamed by a messy bun in which no fewer than three pencils are residing. She's wearing a large apron overtop of a green, flowery dress, and the apron is covered in paint, just like about half of the woman’s face. A paintbrush is in the apron pocket, and her hands look permanently stained from paint or maybe ink.

“Oh, what happened to your friends?” Dustin’s mom crows at seeing Max and Lucas.

“We're fine,” Lucas says immediately.

“Yeah, I just brought them back to get cleaned up so no infections, like you told me.” Dustin says.

“Well, you know where the first aid kit is,” she says. “Let me know if you need anything else. I'll put on some tea for everyone, I was just about to have some anyway.”

“Mom, there's only three days left of summer, we don't want to have tea,” Dustin protests.

“You'll all have tea, and won't kill you to sit down for a moment while your wounds set. Go get cleaned up!”

Max sees Dustin and Lucas share a look like “why?” and Max isn't exactly thrilled to find herself roped into tea with this strange lady and her son and his friend either. But no one argues.

In the bathroom, Dustin finds all sorts of awful stingy stuff to put on their scrapes. Max is relieved to find that her scrape isn't as bad as it looks and is actually probably going to be a pretty cool looking scab. Dustin patches Lucas up as well even though the two boys bicker a bit and Lucas’s cut is deeper.

They exit the bathroom quietly, trying to sneak out, but Dustin’s mom stops them and makes them sit down in the cluttered kitchen after she inspects Lucas and Max and deems them “well enough to be going on with”.

Of course, she and Dustin and Lucas tell the other two boys she's introduced to later (Mike and Will) that it was “so boring” but Max found she'd actually enjoyed listening to the woman talk about her work (illustrations), the hobby she and her husband shared (constant tinkering) and her childhood in York. 

Months later, Max still calls Dustin curly. And months later still, she says to Lucas, “um, by the way, sorry, for running you over that first day,” he laughs and says, “wow, I forgot about that. But yeah, me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so, just for the record, I don't think girls are weak. At all! Even if they wear pink lacey stuff and makeup all the time! But, even though I'm not basing Max on myself, I am drawing heavily on my experience as a former tomboy for her characterization. And I definitely used to think I had to be like a boy in order to be tough in those days of my tomboyishness. Fortunately, there's lot's of great lady role models I think (hope) Maxwill eventually have in Nancy, Joyce, and Karen, who will hopefully show Max she can be a tough gal in whatever way she wants. Of course, again, this is all probably going to be horribly AU or OOC in a few months because the Duffer Brothers are crafty geniuses, but you already knew that so.


	4. Hold Me Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a drabble inspired by yet another season one rewatch. I need season two real bad, kids.

Dustin had said, “You can change the direction of a compass with a magnet. If there's a presence of a more powerful magnetic field, the needle deflects to that power.”

Prior to November 6th, 1983, Mike would have told you the most important things in his life were his friends, his family, and winning the annual science fair. And writing good campaigns. Then a mysterious telekinetic girl had shown up in the woods and just like the compasses, he deflected to a higher power.

The year without her, he stopped caring about science fairs and campaigns. There was only room for caring about friends and family, because he'd learned you never knew how much time you'd get with them. He was aimless. A broken compass.

Then she reappeared, she found him and he found her again. Drawn to each other. Like magnets.

As she clings to him so tightly, Mike has to take shallow breaths, a truth catches him in the chest and settles in, probably forever.

She is his true north.


	5. Not Ok

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I had so many feels about that Mileven reunion , y'all, that I'm working them out through Mike Wheeler centered fanfic. Sue me. Or, you know, comment and kudo if you like it ;)

Mike Wheeler feels like a damn idiot for crying. She’s back, he should be thrilled. He  _is_ thrilled, she’s back, and that means all of his hoping wasn’t for nothing and that they can actually, maybe, finally… well, for the first time in almost a year, he’s something other than just angry or numb or scared. He's hopeful.

He's hopeful and... and. Well. He’s thrilled to see her, embarrassed that she actually did hear him pouring his heart out over the radio all those months because after awhile, he stopped thinking she was really there, and said a LOT more personal stuff than he might have otherwise. He's elated that she doesn’t seem the least bit fazed by his super emotional radio episodes, angry that she’s been alive and mostly ok all this time while he’s thought her dead or worse, hurt that she didn’t answer him, and relieved that she is ok. And, ok, sure, he's more than a little bit attracted to her new look, and he's hopeful that her response to his 353 day angst-fest means she missed him the same way and feels the same way. But most of all Mike is just achingly rageful at the whole world, mostly Hopper, for keeping them apart. And yeah, pissed that she shows up  _now_ of all goddamned times, when there's a whole stupid army of demo-dogs after them, how will they survive this, when she barely survived her encounter with the lone demogorgon? And, and, and...

He’s supposed to just be happy that she’s back, and he is, but there are about a thousand other emotions wrapped up in that happiness, and all of them explode into that first shove he gives the chief before the big, burly man drags him into an empty room to “talk. Alone.”

 _Okay, cool_ , he thinks. Maybe he can just get all his emotions out by shoving Hopper some more. He shouts, then shoves, then punches, but the older man’s strength stops him and Mike, overcome with all those stupid emotions, so many goddamned emotions, just lets the officer shut him down. “You’re okay, kid. You’re okay,” the chief mutters to him.

He’s _not_. He is so not okay. But he’s so tired and wrung out and full of feelings he can’t process that he stays there, feeling again like an idiot for crying, but grateful the chief lets him cry.

He settles after a bit, finally focusing on the only realization that makes sense to him (because damned if his emotions are going to make any sense to him), that even if _he_ _isn't_ ok, _she is_. Mostly. And that's enough for now.


	6. Freedom is a kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many mileven feels. Here's some more angst for you.

The cabin is warm. The policeman is warm in a way. Mostly gruff. But his voice is warm when he reads to her about a redheaded orphan. His smile is warm when he watches her eat eggos.

She’s lonely. But at least she’s warm. And at least she feels like she can talk to the policeman in a way she couldn’t to Papa.

But he isn’t warm like Mike.

Oh how she misses him.

She hadn’t much had the chance to listen for him those twenty-seven days she’d spent in the cold. She’d only caught his walkie-talkie pleas for her in a few dreams. But she caught them. And they made the cold even more bitter. They made it harder when the snow began to fall, for her to stay away. But she didn’t know if the bad men were still watching his house, still looking for her, still waiting. If they might still try to hurt him or their other friends.

So she stays away. But it’s hard.

The box in the woods appeared two days after she’d knocked the hunter man unconscious and stolen his coat and hat. She would later realize this was because Hopper must have heard from the hunter and realized it was her.

At the time, she didn’t care where the food was coming from, or why it was there. She tore into the food with a feral ferocity, the eggos cold, but tasting better than anything she’d had in a while, and the chicken doing more to help fill the gaping hole in her stomach.

The food appeared every day after that. Sometimes eggos and other things in a plastic bin, like the chicken had been. Sometimes carrots and cheese, one time there were even beautiful, sweet cookies, decorated with sprinkles and coarse, brightly colored sugars. She knew someone had to have been leaving the food for her, someone who knew she liked eggos, and at first, couldn’t help but hope that it was Mike.

She stayed by the box all day, despite the bitter cold, determined she wouldn’t miss him. The day grew late, the sun set. Her bitter cold limbs began to ache for release, and she dozed slightly until the noise of someone walking in the brush woke her.

Instantly her eyes focused again on the box, but no one was there. Desperate not to miss him again, she took off toward the sound of other footsteps, careful to mask her own, just in case it wasn’t Mike, just in case it was someone else. At the sight of a dark jacket, her heart rose, but then she saw the frame. The size was all off. And Mike didn’t have a hat like that. Comprehension dawned on her. The policeman.

She considered her options. He had been nice to her, for the short time she’d known him, even lending her a long, warm shirt after coming out of the bath into the cold. He had helped them run from the bad men. And now he was leaving eggos for her. He wasn’t Mike. But he probably had a warm house like Mike. And she was cold. And lonely.

His house was warmer, but nothing like Mike’s. Where Mike’s had been mostly tidy and clean-smelling and warm, Hopper’s was messy, smelled of smoke, and had odd drafts, in spite of the many blankets he’d given her.

“You can curl up on that couch there,” he’d told her. “It’s warmer in here than in the bedroom. Cleaner too, believe it or not. Tomorrow, I’ll take you somewhere the bad men won’t be able to find you.”

At first the cabin was cold. And messy. Messier by far than Hopper’s house. But as he’d said, they'd make it nice. And it was nice. Real nice.

It was warm. And there was TV, something she’d never had before. For the first few months she was content to follow the “Don’t Be Stupid Rules” because outside was cold and the cabin was warm, and at least she had a small window into the world with the TV. And it’s mind-focusing static.

She reads and watches TV during the day to pass the time while she’s alone, and uses the static of the TV to listen to Mike at night. He cries sometimes. She cries too.

One day, she’s helping herself to an eggo and peanut butter sandwich for lunch, when she decides to branch out beyond the news programs and game shows and Sesame street she usually watches. A pretty woman is talking urgently to a handsome man (handsome is a word she picked up from one of her books) and then suddenly, his lips are on hers.

She drops her sandwich.

She’s back in that room, what had they called it? Cafeteria. She’s back with Mike and his mouth is against hers and her insides feel sparkly again, like static electricity, only so much better.

_So other people do this too,_ she thinks, and still wonders why, although maybe the sparkly feeling is reason enough. After all, people outside the lab make all sorts of things just to be pretty or sparkly or tasty, like the eggos. At this she picks her sandwich up off her lap, wipes away the peanut butter on her jeans, and starts eating again.

She watches the program while she eats lunch every day. Beautiful men and handsome women embrace and put their lips together a lot. They seem to do it because it feels good, and they talk about things like love and desire.

When she reads a book of fairy tales a few days later, she learns the name for putting lips together. The page says the prince kissed the princess awake and below it, an illustration of the prince bending down to the princess, his lips against hers. 

Suddenly the warmth of the cabin is stifling heat, and the time away from her friends, away from Mike feels sharper inside her, like shards of glass.

True love's kiss, the book had said. Love. She looks up the word in her dictionary to be sure, but thinks she has a pretty good idea of the meaning. “strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties.”

Songs on the radio make more sense now, TV programs make more sense. But understanding doesn't make it any easier. Now she just has words for why her heart aches for Mike in a way she couldn't figure out before.

He cries later that night when she finds him in her mind. He tells her over the walkie-talkie that he misses her, that he would do anything to see her, that he wishes she could just give him a sign to let him know she's okay. She thinks about the book, about true love's kiss, and wonders if it'll work here. Mike isn't asleep, but maybe if she kisses him… he fades away from her the second her lips touch his.

She can't bring herself to get out of bed the rest of the day, not even when Hopper tempts her with eggos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please comment!


	7. You Might Think

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hopper centric drabble on his feelings about Jane/El growing up.

She's not Sarah. He knows this of course. Intellectually he knows this, she doesn't really look like her, or act like her. She isn't even the right age. Sarah would only just be ten. And this girl is, well, she's definitely a thirteen year old.

She's moody and fickle and good lord, Jim is in no way prepared for this.

When he'd taken her in, he'd known she wasn't Sarah, he'd known he wasn't getting his little daughter back. But he is just not ready for how much of her own person El already is, in spite of having been a lab rat for so long.

He's certainly not ready for her to be getting upset over a boy.

Like when she'd said she missed her friend and Jim had to remind himself that the Wheeler boy was her first friend. But that did nothing to get rid of his discomfort whenever the telekinetic girl talked about Mike or about seeing him in her head. She didn't talk about any of the other boys as much.

He knew it wasn't fair to lie to her about when she'll see him. A part of him would sincerely like to keep her and that kid apart even if she could go out and lead a normal life, just so maybe she'd be able to have a bit of the childhood that lab had stolen from her. Which of course he knows isn't fair to her, not much better than those guys at the lab really. He'll have to accept that she's growing up and do what he can to let her be a normal teenager.

Just maybe not right now, he decides, lighting a cigarette before opening his truck to drive them both to the lab. There's an interdimensional threat to take down after all. Things aren't really normal yet. Spying her and that boy sharing solemn goodbyes and inching closer to one another, he can't help himself.

“El!” he shouts, breaking them apart. “Come on kid. It's time.”

After all, normal teenagers get interrupted by their parents, he figures.


End file.
